The new Ontario sunshine list is out

[Argus]

The Ontario Sunshine List is released each year. It details all public servants earning more than $100,000 a year, which is twice the national average, in case you're wondering.

This year there are 131,000 names on the list. That is roughly 1% of the population. All public servants. And this list is expected to soon explode in size. Police, firefighters and teachers are among the groups whose base salary is now approaching $100,000. This should give people a clue as to why Wynne continues to enjoy unstinting support from Ontario's public servants and their families. Btw, Ontario's debt payments are currently $12.3 billion per year and expected to rise as interest rates rise, especially if the Liberals get back in.

“If you think the list is big now, wait,” said Daniel Cohn, a professor in the school of public policy and administration at York University. “The high school teachers are starting to enter the list already. Next year the elementary school teachers will start to enter the list,” he said, referencing expected teacher salary increases. 

http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/ontario-sunshine-list-grows-now-includes-131741-workers

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/as-inflation-continues-to-march-upward-so-do-the-number-of-public-servants-on-the-sunshine-list

Edited March 24, 2018 by Argus

[Michael Hardner]

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/money-economy/are-you-in-the-middle-class/

This article showed $108K to be the cutoff for top %40 of incomes in 2015.  I am therefore not surprised that we have so many making $100K.

I do think that wage growth needs to be contained though, no arguing that.

[Argus]

1 hour ago, Michael Hardner said:

http://www.macleans.ca/economy/money-economy/are-you-in-the-middle-class/

This article showed $108K to be the cutoff for top %40 of incomes in 2015.  I am therefore not surprised that we have so many making $100K.

I do think that wage growth needs to be contained though, no arguing that.

The figure you are using is for family income, which is, of course, higher than individual income because most families have two wage earners. It's not really applicable to an individual income as detailed on the sunshine list. Note this from your article.

As you’d expect, family incomes are much higher than those of unattached individuals. A middle-class family of two or more earns between $61,929 and $88,074 per year, while a free-and-easy single only needs to earn between $23,357 and $36,859 to be considered part of that social class. In fact, a $56,000 salary will get you into Canada’s wealthiest income quintile of singles, while married couples need to pull in more than $125,000 to crack that elite demographic.

Edited March 24, 2018 by Argus

[Tribal_wayz]

it seems that public sector employees enjoy a "super citizen" status unavailable to the rest of us since we can't choose our employer and choose the employer who will pay more. Our politicians in a spirit of largesse, of selective philandry, in their financial malfeasance hides most of the inequity in public vs. private sector remuneration not in easily comparable wage differences, but in the very difficult and nebulous field of "benefits."

A comparison of employees who leave public vs. private sector jobs is revealing and at odds with the liberal intelligentsia diatribes of "gov't leading society" and "near parity." It's all balderdash. We are being economically raped - by those we elect! What a twisted outcome that is.

Do we need to return to a spirit of egalite and strip unionista's of their right to vote in their employer?

This should lead to some interesting debate.

Edited April 6, 2018 by Tribal_wayz

[Tribal_wayz]

Oh and I'd like to thank our gov't for their munificence. I am a private contractor and over 80% of my work comes from homeowners where at least one (and often both) are "civil" "servants."

I'd like to thank a long line of LibCon politicians who for decades have been earnest in succoring public sector votes - even without the virtue signalling enabling tools like digital photography.

Thank you Bill Davis. Thank you Joe Clark. Thank you Brian Mulrooney. Thank you Pierre. Thank you Justeen. Thank you Dalton. Thank you Cathleen. Ontario is now the most indebted sub-national jurisdiction on the planet. Turning our economy into one where the economy serves the gov't might be the death stroke of Ontario, but it has enabled 15 years of globalist happy gov't.

[cannuck]

The solutions are many, but I always think back to the time Erik Nilesen was Minister of some-damned-thing.  One of his first priorities was to write a white paper on how much money we spend on the administration of the Federal Government.  He found departments with big budgets and no employees (but the money got spent) and departments with little to actually DO, but big budgets, big staffs, etc.  That was the biggest spike in his political coffin.

 

I have maintained for decades that that first question one should ask when negotiating with public servants is not "what more can you do with more money" but "why should you and your department even exist?"   A wholesale house cleaning is needed, and government should be restricted to governing - regulate and enforce, not try to be a social and economic entity.